Under the Bodhi Tree
by Oh Dee
Summary: He wants nothing more than to be happy with Lin, but there is too much grief between them now. Warning: there be angst.


The hospital is all white walls and linoleum floors. The quiet is repressive, the masked doctors running up and down the aisles scarily distant. Tenzin does not ask for directions; he lets his heart pull him down a long hallway until he spots Toph sitting, white knuckles gripping the bench, bending it under her despair.

His father and mother arrive only seconds after he does. Aang immediately perches beside his friend while Katara begins pacing, wringing her hands. There is a small, blue pouch holding spirit water across her shoulders.

When the doctor steps out, wiping bloodied hands on white robes, Toph is up in an instant. She corners him, standing tall, and orders him to speak. He betrays nothing as he pulls her aside to speak privately.

Tenzin can't hear anything. He watches, knowing that if Lin were dead, Toph would have felt the lack of heartbeat even before the doctor stepped out of the door. But he feels that there is something awful waiting for him in that room, something he doesn't know how to accept. Whatever is waiting for him will change him.

It takes a moment for him to realize that Toph has metalbended a steel cart out of anger. She is on her knees, banging angry fists on the floor. Katara stands, her hand fluttering to her heart.

But it is his father who scares him. He has only seen his father enter the Avatar State once before—and that was years ago, in what feels like a different life. The scariest thing to behold, Tenzin decides, is an angry Avatar, who is glowing pale blue and whose eyes have turned white-hot with anger.

"Take it back!" the Avatar demands, hands snaking around the doctor's collar, pulling him three inches off the ground. "Go in there and make her better!"

The ground starts to tremble. The shakes subside the moment Katara places a hand on her husband's cheek, and the Avatar collapses in a heap, tears falling helplessly, just as the doctor scurries away from the all-powerful man and leans against the wall.

Suddenly, Tenzin knows something is wrong.

He bursts into the room without asking, without waiting for Lin's mother to tell him it's okay.

He stops mid-pace when he sees Lin lying in the hospital cot, hair in disarray, green eyes glassy. Her face has lost all its color, and her lips are cracked and pale. Her hands are folded over her lap, so still that he could have sworn she was dead.

"Lin—"

Her head snaps at the sound of his voice. But then her eyes lower again and she refuses to look at him.

Something is dreadfully wrong, and he has no idea what it is, because no one has said a word.

He edges closer to her, careful to keep his distance. He doesn't know if she's angry or upset. All he feels from her is disappointment, a terrible sense of lost hope oozing out of her in waves. Maybe she expected him earlier—but he'd only gotten word that she was in the hospital ten minutes before, and he'd rushed out of teaching his class of Air Acolytes without explanation.

"What's wrong?" His voice is cracking. He can feel a knot forming in the back of his throat and he doesn't even know why yet. "Please, speak to me."

Lin licks her lips but doesn't speak. She uses a long finger to point at a file that sits innocently on the stand next to her cot. He takes it with shaking hands and flips the parchment until he finds what he should be reading.

He only reads one word.

_Miscarriage_.

He feels the world crash over him, drowning him in an unknowable sorrow. He drops the file on the ground and finds that his knees are too weak to support him. He staggers to the cot, taking Lin's hand in his own, and falls to the ground.

He has never cried so much before. He cries over the loss of a life, over the child he will never see bend the earth under its will or fly above the clouds. He cries over how little he can do, how Lin's hand is cold in his, how she stiffens under his touch and pulls away. He cries because he doesn't know what to say, knows it will never get better, knows that even though there is no certificate the binds their lives together, the woman he calls his wife can't bear his pain as well as her own.

Lin's fingernails scratch against the back of his head. She lifts his chin, wiping his tears with her thumb. She doesn't say a word, doesn't smile; she simply watches him cry as she tries to erase the tears with a swipe of her finger.

He cries even harder. He should be taking care of her, but it is she taking care of him.

* * *

No one tells him the second time. Tenzin only finds out because he is visiting the police station and one of the officers informs him that Lin had been taken to the hospital. "For bleeding," the officer adds.

He rushes to the hospital in time to catch Toph still inside the room. He peeks through the crack of the door, watching as Lin turns away from her mother and the older woman slams a fist into the plaster wall.

"You are only hurting yourself!" Toph yells. He can hear the worry laced in her words, sees it in the way her eyebrows are furrowed, notices the slight instability in her stance.

Lin shakes her head, determined. She seems too tired to argue, but her mouth is pulled into a frown. "My responsibility—"

Toph shakes her head. "Your only responsibility is to yourself."

There is a moment of silence. It resonates through the room. Tenzin can't breathe in fear of breaking it, of disturbing the dust that has settled.

Even when she is weak, Lin is stronger than Tezin can ever be. She bows her head in respect, careful to keep her eyes on the white sheets that cover her legs. "I never told him."

"Well, he's been standing at the door, so he knows now."

Chief Beifong leaves the room without another word. She stops at the door to glare at Tenzin, her blind eyes unseeing but all-knowing. He feels tears prickling his eyes as Toph regards him before she stalks past.

Tenzin should have taken better care of Lin. He should have realized something was different. She was slower; her moves more calculated. She ate less when the nausea began, could sometimes hardly get out of bed. He should have figured it out; it isn't like he's a stupid man. But she would swat him away, bark at him for coddling, for suffocating her. "I must be catching a cold," she had said, her hands traveling to rest on her flat belly. "And trying to keep me from doing things will not make it any better."

He should have tried harder, should have stopped listening to her. If he had, maybe she wouldn't be lying in the hospital bed again. He pictures the doctor wiping his red-stained hands, telling Lin that she's lost another one. He does not have to imagine the devastation she must feel, because he feels it, as if it is part of his bones, a part of the blood coursing through him.

Lin does not meet his gaze. He kneels by her side, the movement far too familiar. When he takes her hand this time, she does not move. She lets his fingers fill the spaces between her own.

"I love you," he tells her.

In the twenty-eight years he has known Lin Beifong, this is only the second time he has seen her cry.

* * *

Again, the news is a surprise. It happens while they are both in the Beifong mansion, her getting ready for work, him tying the saffron cape around his neck. He hears a crash in the bathroom, an unmistakable grunt that belongs to Lin. He fears the worse: a robber has snuck in or one of Yakone's followers, still attempting to overthrow the people responsible for his fall, has decided to seek revenge. He is not prepared for the sight that greets him when he flies into the bathroom, a trail of blood leading to a crouching Lin, who holds her stomach with bloodied fingers.

He swoops down to gather the woman in his arms. She's heaving, her breaths shallow, her face pale. She is still clad in her nightdress, a pale-green frock that must now be thrown away or burned. Lin makes no move to stop him as he lifts her, but when he reaches the door, she places a hand on his chest and shakes her head.

"We need to get you to the hospital," he pleads. At thirty-four, it is easier to control the tears, but there is a heaviness in his heart he cannot control.

"I already know what they'll say," she says bitterly. "Just help me wash up."

Tenzin does as she asks. Lin feels so light in his arms. He takes her back and draws water for her bath. He washes the blood and nearly chokes at the sight. When she asks him to put it in a metal box she has bent into shape, he lets a few tears escape and roll down his cheeks.

It is evening by the time they are standing together under the leaves of a Bodhi tree. There is a fresh mound next to two others. Lin has her hands clasped in silent prayer, and Tenzin knows she is waiting for him to speak.

"We shall meet in your next life," is all he says, all he can say.

"I can't do this anymore," she tells him.

He knows that. He would never ask her for more. Her responsibility is to herself—to the Police Station, to the Academy, to the legacy her mother has left in her stead. It would be selfish of him to beg. He wants nothing more than to be happy with Lin, but there is too much grief between them now, three efforts that are now buried a few feet beneath the ground.

Tenzin wraps an arm around her stiff shoulders and pulls her into an embrace. He wishes desperately for his love to seep into her bones, for her heart to become lighter, for the frown that has found a permanent home on her lips to transform into a smile. He holds her, moves one hand to cup her cheek, uses his thumb to run along the length of her jaw as she watches him.

He feels the chasm between them grown, until he can only see a small, distant, fading Lin on the other side.

* * *

**AN:** I'm sorry, guys. I just seem incapable of writing happy things. All I want is to wallow in the pain that is Lin and Tenzin. There is something so visceral about their relationship that is ultimately doomed.

Please review.


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